Dearest Daughter
by katilly
Summary: Is leaving your only daughter who struggled to be herself her whole life a series of letters an act of selflessness? Or was Natalie Prior never truly Abnegation and always remained Dauntless?
1. Chapter 1

All characters are owned by Veronica Roth. Please let me know what you think. I am so proud to be sharing my first writing bouts about a book I feel so passionately about.

Chapter 1

"How drab.." Christina looks around taking in her surroundings as she enters the threshold of what once was Natalie and Andrew Prior's home, her friend's home, a murderer's home. She shakes her head and thinks to herself, _No I cannot think like this. She is my friend, I understand why now_. _I'm glad to stay here, rather than in some stranger's home. I lost her again.. This time it's entirely my fault. Why didn't I tell someone she left sooner? _ She shakes her head again, but this time in a guilt ridden way. Blinking back tears, she looks at her companions still on the stoop, Lynn, Uriah, and Zeke.

Christina decided to enter the home first; she has nothing left to lose. Her first love is gone. A feeling she can never get back of butterflies and swimming thoughts and secret touches and stolen kisses, is lost forever. Obviously there are no surveillance cameras in the homes of members of Abnegation, so her act of dauntlessness was not quite so.

"All clear," she sighs as she recalls the day her small group decided to leave for the Abnegation sector, right After Tris left the Dauntless compound in the dead of night. Four cornered her that morning at breakfast; he looked troubled and desperate, demanding to know if she had seen Tris. He disappeared for a few hours only to return, informing the group in a riotous speech that they had to join the Factionless in the Abnegation's neighborhood in order to triumph over the Erudite. Before the cheering died, however, Christina noticed him slip out of the crowd, toward the street exits.

"_Where are you going? We need you!" She demanded._

"_To die with her," Four retorted. "She is dying for everyone. I will die for her, so she won't be alone." _

"_You, you are selfish! You are just too scared to face the world without her!" She screamed at him while the tears streamed down her face, soaking her shirt. She realized she was talking about herself in that moment, how she yearned to be with her first love after she learned his sad fate. Her emotions overcame her as she collapsed into a ball and sobbed uncontrollably for minutes on end. It was only when she realized that he did not come to comfort her that Four had disappeared._

Snapping Christina out of her reveriw is a cloud of dust as Uriah enters the room and throws himself onto the couch with a loud flop. He coughs incessantly for a few moments, swatting at the dusty air. With a raspy voice he says "It's itchy, but soft. Dibs! You all can fight it out for the rest of the rooms!"

The remainder of the group pauses to look at each other a moment, its Lynn who breaks for the stairs first. But unfortunately for her, Zeke is springier. He reaches the staircase as she the stairs, grabs the railing and leaps over it 5 steps ahead of her. Unfortunately for him, Lynn is more cunning.

"How do you propose to get Shauna up the stairs, Mr. I can jump leaps and bounds?" she quips.

Zeke stops dead in his tracks while the floor creaks beneath him and glares at Lynn open mouthed for just a second. A second long enough for her to push him to the floor of the landing with a loud groan and a hop over him. Immediately she claims the room to the left, Christina hopping over him as well claims the one to the right.

Despite the dig, Lynn and Christina allow Zeke the larger bedroom once shared by the Priors. She is a good sister deep in her heart and is hopeful that one day, and dreams it is tomorrow, that Shauna can walk up those stairs. She even resigns herself to help Zeke carry her chair up them every day, if it means a sense of normalcy for someone whose life is forever altered because of her selfish actions. Lynn's room looks fairly plain, but as she moves a dresser into the closet to clear space for Hector several books fall to the floor, she picks one up staring at it in a questioning way, _Synaptic Functions of Brain Chemistry._ _Ew,_ she opens a window, aims for the nearest fire and flawlessly makes her shot.

"Chris, how is your room?" She calls across the hall.

Christina takes in her quarters; everything is neat, just a little too neat, hospital corners on the bed, gleaming windows, impeccably folded clothing, and not a single adornment on the wall or dresser. It's obvious though, a girl lived here. "It's definitely Tris's. Plain but in an "I am trying too hard to fit in" kind of way." Christina calls back as she ventures back into the tiny hallway. "What's up? Why are you just standing there?" She eyes Zeke up and down trying to figure out why he has been immobile for several minutes while the others claimed their bedrooms. She quickly realizes his foot fell through the floor, revealing a large hole, full of papers.

"What the?" Lynn joins them in the hallway. As Zeke removes his foot from the hole, she grabs a paper. "Oh my god! They are letters, dozens of them, to Tris!" She picks them up and throws them in the air, as they cascade over them the group stairs up in awe, each grabbing a different letter before it hits the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The group stares at the pieces paper in their hands, but several more sparsely populate the floor around the group.

"You know for Dauntless, you are all being pretty damn quiet." Uriah quizzically peers at his companions as he stomps up the stairs toward the others. "Confetti is meant to be thrown, guys!" He bends down and grabs a paper on the floor, but as he goes to throw it in the air he stares at it as if he is truly reading for the first time. "It says, 'Dearest daughter', and a number in the corner. This one has '5'." He grabs another, "This says '12'"

"Mine say '20, 3, 7, and 21," responds Lynn.

"I have 10 through 15 and 19," joins Christina. She begins searching the remaining on the floor looking for something, "Where is 1?"

"Here!" Zeke thrusts a paper into Christina's hands. "I.. I don't want it.." The group looks at him as if he has recently sprouted an extra head on his shoulder. "I had enough of curiosity with the Erudite at their headquarters. I'm only curious enough to want to know certain things.." Lynn puts a hand on his shoulder; she knows he wants to know how to save her sister from a life of confinement. A life she wants to save her from too.

Christina gazes at the paper for a long while. _These are meant for Tris, no Beatrice, not me or them. _Everyone gapes at her and her hands begin to shake with expectations. The Candor in her seeks the truth that lies within these letters. The truth and Tris Prior have backfired before, and she wasn't quite sure if she could go through that again.

"Lynn, I can't…." Christina sputters and throws the papers on the floor with an exhaustive scream. She stops at the door frame and rests her head against it. The coolness of it, calming the thoughts that are rushing through her head. _What do I need to know?_ _What truth can these letters hold about why Will died? _

The group that surrounds Lynn on the small landing disgusts her. "Are you dauntless? These are letters! What are you scared of? A paper cut?" The group around her frustrates her, she knows Tris would not object to their knowing about her upbringing. She was a proud, young, Abnegation girl who became a Dauntless woman in love with a Dauntless man. Tris may not have known it was.. is love, but it takes a person in love to know love.

Surprisingly, Uriah speaks first. "They're gone. We're left to figure this out on our own. They won't be able to survive these two weeks before the Factionless and true Dauntless get to them. How else can we remember them? Remember Marlene? Remember Will? Remember what Shauna was willing to die for?" At Marlene's name Lynn's ears perk up and a tear escapes on to her cheek.

"She should have saved her!" Lynn falls and sobs into Uriah's chest.

"If she saved her, your brother would be dead," Zeke replied stroking her head.

Lynn sobs harder, barely able to catch her breath between the words, "I.. Love…" and then losing herself to her feelings completely.

"Give me the letters!" Christina barks at the group.

Before handing them over, Uriah evaluates her speculatively. "We shouldn't just get rid of them, Chris! What if!"

_What if.. What if things were different and Tris shot Will in the hand not the head.. If I chose Candor to stay with my family, not Dauntless, but then I would have never met Will..If I never befriended the small girl in initiation… _

Christina looks at Uriah and as they nod to each other, they collect all the remaining letters from the floor and the group. "We will read them. Keep the ones that are necessary for Tris to survive and burn the rest." He nods in approval of her actions. He just hopes she can hold out that long to hear what the letters have to say.

"You really care for her? After everything?" Zeke questions and eyes her speculatively.

"No.." The Candor in me would call me a the liar, the Dauntless in me, makes me say, "I'd want to know everything that has made me who I am.."


End file.
